Aha, but these are the obvious things … my eyes go to the flowers and what is on the scale … i think that’s the story behind. 🙂

Kim, look at the god-form closer … is that an ibis head maybe .. cause sethian form has squared ears and a long, down-turned snout, a canine body with a tail. It’s the god of destruction, turmoil, illness … i’m not sure that would be allowed with that temper to do the weighing 😉 … though he did like the company of fair Isis .. but his main thing is to cause chaos (he has put him beneath you so that he can lift you up. He will groan beneath you as an earthquake … – Pyramid Texts, Spell 356) .. the flower is, I think, the white lily, which has great alchemical significance .. nymphea flower that Egyptians used in ceremony rites..

Kim

Of course, but my experience tells me that it’s better to start with the simple, partly because you get some success in the start, partly because the rest become smaller each time 🙂

It’s difficult to see what’s in the scales, but a cobra in the left, an urn in the right? and why?

Maat was both the goddess and the personification of truth and justice. Her ostrich feather represents truth.

Maya

Yes looks to me like that, instead of a Maats feather a white cobra like figure .. hard to see yes, on the other side, maybe a scarabeo in red representing the heart, cause it had that representation in the funerary ceremony rites, Isis and god-advocate .. that speaks for the person. why? – ha, to tell you the truth I think i never answered any question that started with why 😉

Kim

Maats feather sounds perfectly right to me, even managed the why. I didn’t know about Maat feathers! Wiki: “the Ancient Egyptian concept of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice.” And the heart sounds also perfectly right.
Justice without Compassion is unjust.
I think the whys are pretty interesting; why do people say and do what they do.

I see how it can be mistaken for Seth easily, cause has the same crux ansata as Seth in the hand, while Thoth is usually depicted with a scroll.

Kim

Has Thoth anything common with Scorpio?
Isis is familiar to Virgo, so on one side we have Virgo and on the other side we have Scorpio. Seth is more like Capricorn.

Maya

I’m not sure with that actually, that’s your lore.

Kim

It states that he became associated with “the judgment of the dead” and that is a Scorpio thing: if the heart is sick, take it out.
Two star signs following each other are their direct opposites, Virgo is the opposite of Libra, and Libra is the opposite of Scorpio, but that don’t make Virgo and Scorpio the same, the sting are different.

Steiner mentions something about the sphinx’s stands for man’s four lowest sheath or bodies, what we have with us down to Earth.
The sphinx to the right is feminine I think, also in blue.

Maya

Silver! :))

Kim

I am gone a little dead now, but we still have a lot of details in the lower part we have to understand and integrate, but otherwise a nice job until now 🙂

The lily then represents Sophia, Mary or Isis, above we have the Rosicrucian Rose representing the Son, Horus and Jesus.
So the mother contains the lower part where the Son contains the upper part. The physical (sphinx=phys, ether, astral, soul) and the spiritual world.
Glass square = physical world.
Circle containing a Seven star containing the scales? Seven planets signifying the planetary powers within the Zodiac.

Maya

You made a great analysis, glass square seems physical world yes, inside of which is a star with seven points (planets, metals-chakras) so reminds me of square-circle combination in Vitruvi’s microcosm macrocosm .. so with that analogy glass square may be representing a man, that has inside of him the little universe resembling the big .. And from which a rose springs and blooms.

Kim

Yes, beautiful, the circle are a micro-zodiac and the star, the seven planets or chakras, together the microcosm, in the cube which are the physical man.
And the rose springs and blooms in the spiritual world.
The two sphinx’ are the powers which manifest in the physical world who Steiner calls Lucifer and Ahriman.
What about the two hands?

Maya

I’ve just been thinking most of the morning how the glass cube is very genius, and, has its own story with layers .. and how very sentient, human .. it is .. and intimately how can this human side of the pic be even sad. I get the feeling that all the other parts of the pic, except the lily, cube, and the rose are pure form satisfied .. but not that part. It is because of the nature of the glass, and that is a genius part. Glass when well polished regularly, gives a beautiful picture of the world, like a man who tends good for his soul, character, all … but when not, when it is unclean, you can’t see what is outside of the cube, and sort of becomes only thing we know -like man that leads very worldly life plagued with all negative sides of it..and it brings ignorance, and also,the sad part-cube becomes sort of prison, hopeless. So that is from perspective of a man inside the cube .. but window is seen through from both sides, and this view has to do how light comes in to the cube .. so it can only if polished .. and cube is sort of prism that breaks the light in many colours of the rainbow, seven mostly, so this forms a man, and gives light to the growing of the Rose. And that is the manifold creation. But this too has a sad side … and that is this, even with perfectly clean cube and light beautifully coming in, and things outside the cube visible, still the glass visible as it is, is the separator of Man and Cosmos, and its like attached,and influencing but not reachable from the state of being inside and polishing good, except but the rose, rose grows from it, and its only thing that connects humanity with the architecture of the universe. Thank you for clarifying this to me, and that you noticed the glass cube.
To just look at these picture is nice, and one can say they are beautiful then, but that’s just souls recognition automatic of whats beautiful, symmetry and colours .. but I think they should be deciphered, observed well, really so many suggestions in them, underlying structure beyond mere looking.

Kim

Yes, they are fantastic, especially the rose symbolics as the only way out of the box, but it is as you say somewhat depressing, life is not simple. I hope we will see many roses flower in the coming years, though.
But there is something missing, the female mystery, as some calls it, what Douno hints at, another kind of joy and meaningfulness which is not signified in the picture.
I have also thought a little about the floor in the physical plane, the chess board they are standing on could signify the rigid rule of karma, and the glass box is a chess piece which is moved around by Lucifer and Ahriman.
What does the two hands with the fire refer to? The scale is also a cross and the top of the cross is a hand with a finger-pointing up, as we see John the Baptist in Raphael’s paintings.

Maya

I like the chess explanation of rule of karma! Very deep instead of the usual explanation of the masons, how it represents the architecture and geometry of the universe, and how world is lined with parallels and meridians, the order of GAOTU … but the chess game is more reasonable .. But whose hands?

Kim

Beautiful, I didn’t know, I haven’t used much time on the masons, but they are also right, Karma is the building block’s of the physical universe, that’s why it’s called maya, no pun intended 🙂

Maya

haha … You had to draw that from the pocket ha?

Kim

Yes, it was too difficult to resist 🙂
Above the yin/yang sign are what I think is two hands, looking a little like a flower, up from the hands stream a fire changing over into the cross.

Maya

I think it’s not the hands of the Prime Mover, but representing energy-thought-fire moving of individual as participant of divine fire, alchemist. I noticed that there aren’t depictions of God just architecture, and twofold energies in the set of the paintings. So I think it’s the Great Work symbol, on which depends the scale in the end, is it in equilibrium, and is the heart light as the feather. But thats just my impression

Kim

You just lost me a second 🙂
But, if it’s the great work symbol it’s logical to call the flame for the kundalini power. But where does the hands come from? Something with the Earth?

Maya

Hm … i’m not sure … but you are nudging me again .. I got an idea .. count the symbols from below to the sky ending with Sol+Luna, or chymical wedding .. so its Fleur de Lys, cube with the star, rose, yin and yang as equilibrium (neutral), then the hands, then the cross of the scale with what seems to be rose in the cross, and ending with Sol and Luna betwixt.

Kim

Arh, couldn’t you have given the sum 😉 each time I count I find a new way and reaches a new number.
But it looks a little like the Tree of Life, but I only reaches nine.

Maya

Hahaha … The sum – never! I can count 7 .. so I thought could be connected with practical alchemy more … but yes you can count it like that too ..

Kim

I reached 8 when I counted your list.
That I reached 9 was because I missed Kether, but it’s the lying 8 symbol, infinity, so it’s ten now.
The only problem is that we see the Kabbalah tree from the back:)

Maya

🙂 great .. Ill get the mirror, you hold the picture … Remember how Temperance was alluding to the right pillar on gemini picture … I wouldn’t be surprised if things looked inverted either..

Eva and Adam

Kim

The gemini picture was ok in all aspects, it was also the reason I had the problems with Libra, why was the Father to the left and the Mother to the right?
If you look at old Adam and Eva figures and paintings, Adam were nearly always to the right, but more modern paintings have moved him to the left. Maja Hm, i think up to now we got fragments just with this one, i’ve been thinking about the story, the fire cleared it a bit. Ill try to write it in a bit.

Maya

Ok, a bit of stepping from Christian or egyptian or any other religious concept. Back to alchemic basics. Alchemy is trait of fermenting the vital Spirit in and by its own Light – that’s universal and individual. We see on picture regions, celestial, terrestrial and sort of interior underground. Celestial is I think represented by plants-emotional, receptive-in a man a heart region (ok again, rose flower, Christ and all that), terrestrial-sensual represented by animal forms sphinx (half animal half human) – domination in mans body is the head, and thus why maybe the sphinx-symbol of intellectualism, correct answers (the tale of Oedipus and the question ).
Last sphere, underground I think its the glass cube, i thought of prisms – but glass isn’t only prism, its diamond too-thus mineral, in human body its lumbal region. The aim of Alchemy is to reverse the action in their order.
Aha yes, its the same thing I thought but forgot to tell you about, Gichtels picture, it’s not to follow the orbiting its to reverse it. So the fire of natural life entering into fermenting opens, developed and sets free celestial Light.
About the hands and light hermeticism or better say alchemy, is the magnetism of Light-thought to be the emanating spirit of Wisdom , Soph. So to understand the nature respecting that first cause man asks questions, as an extortion of Sphinx like forms of the true answer. About the white proliferation in the below of the picture i think it depicts the vegetable spirit – which is growth-causing. So we have pic of human vital spirit that has to be purified, weighed in order to be regenerated white flower (regeneration, in Egypt, while the blue is enlightenment. But we got it well all and cube too, a cage, prison, entrapped in the mineral – which also means the divine light is somewhat penetrating but hidden from it. Bah, I need a thought to finish it.

Kim

Maya, it was too many ball’s in one, I didn’t catch a single one, constipation I think 🙂

By the way, which of the alchemy book’s do you recommend, when it should be clear and concise and all in all readable.

No, I caught one, the rose in the middle of the Cross, I hadn’t seen it.

Maya

Me too … sort of picture had fallen behind, became blurred … and i’ve seen a beautiful one i’m thinking of and enjoying for 2 days now … this Libra picture is left in some corner of my head just .. if you get new ideas about it please enlighten me ..

Kim

I think we to a great extend have solved it.

Sun is Lucifer or Yang and the Moon is Ahriman or Yin, and they are in equilibrium.
Everything is build around the trinity, even the weight have a cross in the middle.